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shyscyberchamber.com
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UNSOLVED CRIMES |
Date
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Advertisement of Death |
APR 2003 |
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The voice on the telephone was smooth,
fluent and persuasive... and instantly Josephine Backshall was
cocooned in a web of friendly familiarity. She knew the caller's
voice well and been longing for him to ring. After all, he was
helping her to earn
£100,
a big enough sum of 'pin-money' to make a world of difference to the
family budget.
There was nothing in the least shady about the job as a part-time
model that Josephine was beginning to enjoy. In fact, the
thought that the small advertisement she had placed in the local paper
could be misconstrued in anything like an unseemly light had
never crossed the mind of the house proud, 39 year old mother of
three, who sang for the local church choir and was a leader of the
town's Brownies troupe. And the idea that there could be
anything sinister about the man who answered her advertisement and, in
a 'trial session' had photographed on the front lawn of the family's
tidy, middle class semi-detached home in Maldon, Essex, would have
seemed too outrageous to contemplate.
The man, she told her husband Mike, seemed like a 'good sort'.
And, as she spoke to him again on the phone, she realised that what he
was offering her would be her biggest job so far:
£100
for a day's work - probably, she thought, modeling for something no
more glamorous than a cheap cosmetic firm.
The caller talked on, cool, collected, giving the impression of a very
pleasant personality. A meeting was arranged for that evening
and, after kissing her husband goodbye, she walked through the front
door of their spruce home for the last time.
Three days later, at about 12.00 on Friday 1st November 1974, she was
found strangled to death.
Her body had been dumped in a shallow pond by the side of a lonely
lovers' lane. Her hands were bound in front of her with a length
of cord strapped tightly to her wrists. An identical cord was
lashed to her neck.
Josephine Backshall, the church-going good neighbour who enjoyed an
innocent life of simple pleasures, was killed because she put her
faith in a confidence trickster. She trusted a mystery man whose
identity to the police have spent more than 100,000 man-hours trying
to discover, with not a single clue to put them on the trail of a
quarry whose disappearance has made the Josephine Backshall case one
of Britain's most perplexing unsolved crimes.
No fewer than 40 detectives were assigned to the case in the first
year of one of the biggest, yet most baffling, investigations of its
kind. More than 19,000 members of the public were interviewed.
All of them had either the Christian name of Peter or Dave or the
surname of Thomson or Johnson. It was a combination of those
names that fitted the clues that Josephine had given her family and
friends. It was to them that she had spoken of the man with the
camera who was setting her up not, as she believed as a part-time
model, but as a victim of a brutal murder, even the motive for which
has never been established.
Thousands of car registration plates ere later painstakingly checked
and rechecked by police trying to find the killer's car - possibly a
blue Ford which was seen pulling away from the Fountain public house
in Good Easter, Essex, on the night that Josephine kept her fateful
rendezvous with her killer.
Detectives established that Josephine and the man she so easily
trusted did stop for a drink - one half-pint of beer each - at
the Fountain about an hour after she had left home. He was
presumed to have picked her up nearby and taken her there after a
'business dinner' at a Chinese restaurant - an assumption based on the
fact that forensic experts discovered the remains of Chinese food in
her stomach.
Publican's wife Joan Jones became the last witness to the rendezvous
of a killer and his victim when she saw the couple in the Fountain's
saloon bar. 'I caught only a fleeting glance of him,' she says.
'He was a tall man. His head touched a line of beer mugs hanging
over the bar. He never actually seemed to face me and, on
reflection, it seemed almost as though he was trying to not let anyone
get too close a look at him.'
Mrs Jones identified Josephine from a cine film containing family
holidays shots which detectives showed her. 'I remembered her at
one,' she says. 'She was an attractive woman. She had sat
in the corner of the bar with the man and had seemed totally at her
ease.'
For months, police kept details of the Fountain meeting secret in the
hope that the killer would retrace his steps. It was a forlorn
hope.
The only other potential lead detectives had to go on was a 'French
connection'. A keen-eyed policewoman found a cosmetics sample in
Josephine's bedroom which was one of a very limited batch which had
been imported from France prior to a sales drive. Could the
killer, detectives pondered, have been using Josephine to model this
new range?
Inquiries again, however, came to naught - as did a scrupulous check
on every photographic studio in both England and France from which a
killer might have been tempted by Josephine's advertisement, which
read: 'Lady, late 30's, seeks part-time employment. Own
transport. Anything considered. Previous experience:
banking. Able to type.' Underneath was her telephone number. |
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[
Josephine Backshall ] |
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It was the sort of advertisement often
used to skirt the law as a method of offering sex-for-sale. A
senior officer on the case later described it as 'positively naive'.
He added:
'We all know what the phrase "anything considered" is taken to mean.
The great irony and tragedy of this case is that any innuendo couldn't
have been further from the truth. Mrs Backshall was a
God-fearing woman - and that sort of interpretation of her advert
simply wouldn't have occurred to her. It seems more than likely
that her own innocence - a rare attribute in this day and age - may
have, tragically, lef her to set herself up as a victim of murder.'
Other senior officers have described the Josephine Backshall case as
the 'most frustrating' they have ever worked on. But, as far as
has been possible, they have managed to piece together this diary of
death:
A few days after Josephine placed her ad, a male caller telephoned to
offer her work 'modelling for cosmetics'. An appointment was
made for a week later, 15 miles from Josephine's home, at Witham
Essex. The man never showed up. He phoned the following
day, rearranged the appointment, and again failed to appear. Two
weeks later, the phone rang once more - and Josephine happily arranged
another meeting.
This time, the couple did meet. The 'photographer' took a series
of pictures of Josephine on the front lawn of her home during the day.
By that stage, Josephine's husband had begun to believe her part-time
job would come to nothing, and ironically, expressed mild doubt as to
the authenticity of the cameraman who was promising his wife tidy sums
for what seemed simple work. Josephine allayed those fears,
saying that the man seemed perfectly genuine and, indeed, a 'good
sort'.
The telephone rang again on Tuesday 29th October 1974 and the last
fateful meeting was arranged. Josephine left the family home in
Norfolk Place, Maldon at about 6pm driving to Witham in her red Ford
Cortina, registration number BVW 374L.
Detectives have established that she was seen at Witham's Colingwood
Road car park between 6.30pm and 7pm. A passerby told them her
car may have broken down, because he saw her looking into the engine
with the bonnet raised to the car park entrance. Some time
before 7pm, however, she must have met her killer.
There is a time gap between then and three days later, when a
telephone line worker made the gruesome discovery of her body in the
ditch at Bury Green on the Essex and Hertfordshire border.
The killer had left no clue behind. Chief Superintendent Jack
Moulder, who still keeps the Josephine Backshall case file open, can
only say: 'Someone, somewhere must know him.' |
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